Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Day 6 Riding the Rails to Munich


The awesomeness of the breakfast at the Hotel Garni Probst can not be overstated. Fueled up on that, we went off to see the Deutsche Bahn Museum.  The exhibits are really interesting, and they don't dance around DB's involvement in the holocaust.  The way that they handled the development of railway technology and the differences between that development between the old east and west were really fascinating.  And let's not forget the really big HO Scale railway they have.  Be sure to check the schedule for when the demonstrations are, because otherwise you'll miss out on a really cool show. After a lunch on the go in the Christmas Market (including more Feuerzangenbowle), we wandered off to Munich.  For a change we actually had something booked, our first experimental run with airbnb.com .  We stayed at a place rented out by a nice young doctor right downtown, near the hauptbahnhof and near the tollwood festival.  It's also in a little Turkey kind of neighborhood, so we ended up at a late night Kebob shop a couple of times.  We met up with some of W's co-workers and had some dinner at the Rathaus.  It wasn't quite as good as the first time we ate there, and the service we got was a little lackluster even by German standards. 

Day 5, The round about way to Bavaria


Due to scheduling restraints, and weirdness in the flights we could and could not take, the "simplest" way to get to where we were headed was to go to Nuremberg by way of Zurich.  So our friends were kind enough to drive us the hour or so to the Zurich Airport, so that we could grab a short flight over to Nuremberg. Since once again we were not sure exactly when we'd get there we had nothing booked.  We arrived and marched into the tourist office, and they were able to find us a really great room at the Hotel Garni Probst.  This was another great unexpected score for the trip.  The location is right down town, and didn't even require a long hike from the train station.  By this time we were already loaded down from a shopping trip we'd been on in the morning.  We walked down and managed to find an eirpunsch within moments.  To make matters even better, we managed to find a Feuerzangenbowle stand.  Of course, the whole point of our stop in Nuremberg was another shot at eating at the Nassauer Keller.  Our dinner was great, although a little less interesting than our last visit with Kathy and Dave.  We had a fun night out to dinner and at the market and made ourselves good and comfortable in our nice downtown location.

Day 4, My first foray into France

This day started again with an enormous spread for breakfast, and more apfelkuchen. Then we jumped in the car to go to country number three, a day trip over to Colmar France.  What should you know about Colmar.
1. It's Beautiful and well preserved, it is crawling with old Europe style.
2.  The Gluhwein (Vin Chaud if you're a local) is terrible, it's sickeningly sweet.
3.  They recover from that by being in capital of Alsace, and therefore have plenty of delicious wine to drink that has not been warmed and sweetened. 
4.  The food is delicious, we had this flat bread pizza kind of thing, that I would still go back to get tomorrow if I could. 
5. It's the orignal home of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi 
6. I desperately want to go back, do drink wine and eat.
We had a blast in Colmar, and then returned once more to Auggen where we went out for a delicious traditional meal  I had a wurst salat, which is basically an excuse to call a julienned bratwurst a salad.  It is as you can imagine not very healthy. We then headed back to our comfortable room for a good solid night's sleep to get ready to get back on the road the next day.


Day 3 On to Frieburg


The whole family joined us for breakfast the next morning, an impressive spread of fresh breads, delicious deli meats (well, except for the obligatory liverwurst), home made preserves, and strong coffee, topped off with the most amazing fresh apple cake,)apfelkuchen)  that looked like it had just leapt off the pages of a cookbook.  After breakfast we got dropped off at the DB station in order to go off to Freiburg.  Freiburg is an awesome city, although since we were there on a Saturday, it was absolutely swamped with people.  The Frieburg Munster is really impressive, and since we got to take the English language tour we got some insight into the intricate carvings on the walls.  We found a quiet little Franciskaner Keller Restaurant, that was quite nice and provided us a nice quiet place to sit and eat and stay warm.  We wandered around town a bit more, made our way up to the Schlossberg. After a bit of wandering through the Christmas Market and generally being overwhelmed by the crowd, and grabbed a train back to Auggen to meet our hosts.  They again provided a delicious dinner and great company for us, and then dropped us back off in Badenweiler.

Basel Day 2



W has always been a fan of Dollhouses, so because I'm so awesome, I recommended we visit the puppenhausmuseum as one of our few Basel must see items.  We wandered around for quite a bit nerding out about all the tiny little things.  They won't let you bring in any more than a pocket size camera, which makes it tough to get really good pictures.  But suffice it to say even with out visual proof from my camera, the little tiny things are presented with amazing detail, and the old teddy bears are often very cute, although sometimes creepy. Once the Christmas Market opened up, we had a delicious sit down fondue lunch, and then explored the river front and university area of Basel.  Late in the afternoon we hopped on a train to Auggen to meet some friends, for the next leg of our journey.  Many moons ago W went on a trip to Germany with a co-worker.  They went to stay with the son of a lady who had been the co-worker's au pair. Some time later,   that son had stayed at our house, on a trip through California.  He was nice enough to put us up at his parents place since we were on his side of the pond.  We sat for a fantastic meal of schnitzel, and then he dropped us off for our stay in Badenweiler.  We stayed at the Gastehaus Ursula in Badenweiler, likely the most wonderful family owned B&B style hotel in all of Germany. Yes, my opinion is biased on this, and I'm totally O.K. with that. The lady of the house greeted us with fresh baked Chritmas Cookies and some local beer.  We even took a walk up into Badenweiler where the shops were open late that night and everyone was serving a warm beverage and the whole town gathered.  Our bed was good and comfy, and we settled in from our full day for a good night's sleep.

A Mid-winter Border Crossing Bananza



It's been a busy couple of months, but I've been meaning to sit down and tell you about our little winter adventure for 2011. Last year was our slowest travel year on record, so we had to make the trip count. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving we hopped a swissair flight from SFO to Zurich.  Since at no point were we ever absolutely certain we'd get on a flight, we had only booked a place to stay for several days farther downstream in the trip.  That meant mission one on arrival was getting a place to stay.  We knew we were headed for Basel, so we ended up booking something on hotels.com, once we managed to get the pay buy the minute internet terminals to work in Zurich airport. We jumped on the train from Zurich to Basel,  and arrived quickly.  After a little aimless wandering, we found the check in desk for the Hotel City inn (turns out it shares a desk with the Hotel Euler which caused the wandering). It turns out that the city inn didn't actually have any rooms, so we were "forced" into a room at the nicer Hotel Euler (no charge of course).  We put on some warm gear and rushed right out to find the Christmas market, where we plunked down for the first Raclette over bread and potatoes that we encountered. Yes of course we had some gluhwein with that.  We went back to the hotel a little early, after wandering through the city for a bit we made our way back to the hotel to call it a night.